The present disclosure is generally directed to managing digital photographs and, more particularly, to identifying the time at which a digital photograph was taken.
With the promulgation of modern consumer electronics, photography has become increasingly dominated by digital cameras. A digital camera is a device that captures photographs, video, or both using an electronic image sensor. Many digital cameras store image, video, and audio data with associated metadata, such as, for example, aperture, exposure time, focal length, date and time taken, and location. Some digital cameras store this data in the exchangeable image file format (Exif) image file format.
Many digital cameras provide the date and time a photograph is taken based on an internal clock as part of the photograph's metadata. This is sometimes referred to as a timestamp. Because a timestamp is the time at which the digital photograph is recorded by the digital camera and not necessarily the actual time that the photograph was taken, the difference in recorded and actual times may be substantial. For example, a camera user may forget to adjust the time on a digital camera when traveling outside of the camera's default geographic region or time zone. This may result in a photograph that was taken during daylight hours having a timestamp indicative of capture during nighttime hours. In another example, a camera user may forget to set the time on a new digital camera, resulting in digital photographs having the wrong date, time, or both. These discrepancies may increase the difficulty a user faces when trying to determine the actual time that a digital photograph was taken.